Kaleidoscope

The art museum is alive.

So they say.

You are sceptical as you step into the dark tunnel. Dangling strands of lavender and daffodil curtain both sides of the corridor. Quivering on their petals are gleaming fireflies, scattering pinpricks of light into the air.

This is what they call magic? You ask your partner with a raised eyebrow. 

They only smile, the wispy kind that’s there and gone again. 

Modern technology easily accounts for all this. You wave at your surroundings, accidentally brushing a narrow leaf. It tickles your arm, its touch lingering long after you’ve stuffed your hands into your pockets.

They smile again, neither agreeing or disagreeing, and link their arm with yours, their skin so soft it’s indistinguishable from the petals rustling against your trailing fingertips. You would have squeezed their hand, enfolded it in the cocoon of your fingers, if you hadn’t been afraid that the moment you exerted force they would disappear entirely, bones dissolving.

You choose corridors at random, visiting one display after another. Moving mirrors, ponderous glass balls that turn to water when you walk through them, paintbrushes mapping out dusky galaxies and piercing stars of their own volition.

To rouse them from their dreamy, absent indifference, you’ll have to find the proverbial string attached to the levitating, fluttering books, the handprints of the lurking puppeteer. You tug your partner through the winding passageways, ignoring their subdued protests. 

And then you get lost. You circle back to the same displays. Identical corridors branch outwards. Heart pounding, you dash in different directions, searching for the exit. But there are only more peculiar displays, in rooms or melding into the walls, vaguely familiar or totally foreign.

The walls close in on you. A clever optical illusion, no doubt. The corridors spin and serpentine.

You are the fragile one now, limbs giving out as you fall onto your knees, your partner laying their hand on your shoulder. 

How do we get out? Pulling away the museum’s veneer of enchantment feels insignificant amidst the tightness in your chest.

No response. They are engrossed by a flicker of motion along the rounded wall, where a fluorescent light display depicts a lush, moonlit forest. The image of a creature you cannot name, with violet fur and the body of a bull, lumbers through the wall. His palmated antlers twitch as he hops towards you, wings flaring briefly.

You are about to run when they tiptoe towards the bull-like beast, entranced. He grumbles heartily, his flank grazing the inside of your knee. Involuntarily you reach down, fingers gliding from the tines of his antlers to the coarse fur on his neck, even as some suppressed part of you screams danger. Your partner beams at you as they scratch the bull’s flank, jolting your heart into place.

A parrot with pearly scales in lieu of feathers bursts from the glowing tree on the wall, alighting on your head. Responding to your splutter of indignation with a squawk, she shoots around the corner. 

You follow the silver contrails in her wake, propelled by an invisible force swelling in your rib cage, filling and lifting you up at the same time. In that ephemeral second after one foot has pushed off the floor and the other has yet to land, you are flying.

The bull thumps leisurely behind you. Corridors, spacious caverns, spiralling staircases. The two of you pad across plush grass and smooth pebbles, splash through shallow pools. The marble columns of the museum can’t possibly contain so much space. But the questions dissipate as you glimpse a black core ringed by a shimmering band, like the entrance to a cave.

Their hand in yours momentarily empties out as you slip into the darkness together. The air around you vibrates like a heartbeat. 

You are knee deep in a sea of lavenders and daffodils. The museum has become a realm unto itself, removed from time and space, to accommodate the expanding and ever-changing shapes of the artwork. Inexorably, you move towards a splotch of grey amidst green, purple and yellow, knowing that it is the heart of the museum. 

As the tombstone comes into view, the flowers respectfully fade away. You don’t need to read the letters engraved on the stone to know what they say. You are too large, too connected, for the stitches of illusion to hold. With a pop they break, exposing the jagged crack stretching from head to toe. 

The museum shoulders you as you tremble, turning to your partner for a long-delayed goodbye.  

But there is only an oak tree that has sprouted out of nowhere, its knobby branches curving towards you in a phantom embrace.